She wasn't distinctive enough to earn a nickname, just a
number. But she lived a complicated life: She had at least five calves,
two of which survive in Sarasota Bay; she was struck by a boat and
survived, was repeatedly attacked by sharks in life and after death, and
was even stabbed by a stingray barb. She survived that, too.

That doesn't mean FB05 lived a dull life. And, after all, she
was a scientific pioneer.

Wells first saw FB05 in 1971, when he participated in the pilot
study that led to the renowned Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which
today is a joint program of Mote and the Chicago Zoological Society.
This 40-year program is an overview of Sarasota Bay's dolphin
community. "She was one of the first dolphins we identified,"
he says. "She was a core female of the Palma Sola female band, as
we called it."

Since 1970, Mote scientists have been observing dolphins from
cradle to grave and beyond. The Sarasota Dolphin Research Program works
with Mote's Stranding Investigations Program, which investigates
why animals strand and how they die, and the Ruth DeLynn Cetacean Osteological Collection, which catalogues the bones of dolphins and
whales. Combined, these efforts illuminate the dolphins' way of
life--and death.

Together, the researchers have collected information on the
ordinary lives and deaths of thousands of dolphins, creating a trove of
scientific data that is unmatched anywhere.

If an individual life appears unremarkable, the sum of many lives
can reveal much.

In the end, FB05 was found dead on a sandbar off Longboat Key May
22, 2009. Her bones now lie in two cardboard boxes, one containing her
skull and another the many ribs and vertebrae recovered after her death
and necropsy (animal autopsy). The boxes are among 600 lining the walls
of the cetacean bone collection at Mote, where 25-year volunteer Ruth
DeLynn oversees the remains of 17 cetacean species. "You never know
what you'll learn or what somebody will need to know," she
says. "So we collect all possible information now, creating a
reference source, a library, an encyclopedia of bones."

Meeting FB05

Wells and his predecessor, Dr. Blair Irvine, first tagged FB05 in
the northern portion of the Sarasota Bay dolphins' home range, on
March 18, 1971. Two months later, they spotted her again. She had lost
her tag. They tagged her again. This is when some dolphins pick up a
nickname. Sparks, fitted with a radio transmitter in 1975, has the
Navy's nickname for a radio operator. Nicklo, the study's
oldest-known female, has a nick located low on her dorsal fin and Ms.
Mayhem, tagged May 1976, was memorably feisty.

FB05 was also freeze-branded (hence the "FB"
designation), her skin touched with a metal number cooled in liquid
nitrogen, which causes the pigment to move away and leave a visible
white number on a fin. The number remained with her for life and allowed
researchers to note her identity every time they saw her. And, when she
died nearly 40 years after she was first tagged, it allowed them to
identify her body.

FB05 is one of 1,300 dolphins tagged by Mote researchers since the
program began. Even if she wasn't especially feisty or
interestingly disfigured, her life was enlightening from the start,
helping to establish fundamental facts of local dolphin behavior.

Before Wells' and Irvine's early pilot study, no one knew
whether dolphins ranged the entire coastline or had a home ground. FB05
and the others tagged suggested it was the latter. "She and the
other 11 dolphins tagged during this pilot study provided the first
indications of bottlenose dolphin residency to a specific bay system,
the north part of what we now know as their range," Wells says.
"Our subsequent research was based on our ability to return and
find them in the same area."

Her Life

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Over the next 38 years, Wells and his colleagues encountered FB05
862 times--sometimes just a glimpse, other times for a full health
assessment that included taking her weight--as much as 450 pounds--and
length--nearly 8 feet--and collecting blood, microbiology, urine, fecal
and gastric samples. This was done six times between 1988 and 2001.

Mostly, the results were unremarkable. But they led to the idea of
what "unremarkable"--normal--meant for dolphins in Sarasota
Bay.

FB05 was found occasionally as far south as Little Sarasota Bay but
mostly in the northern half of her home range, Palma Sola. Like most
local dolphins, she favored inshore seagrass meadows in the summertime
and wintered in the channels and passes and along the Gulf coastal
waters. She also had friends--other adult females sharing her
range--including Ms. Mayhem and Saida Beth.

And FB05 had at least five calves over the years, born between 1976
and 1992. Her offspring--two of whom, both females, are still
living--have produced eight calves, including six that are still
thriving.

FB05's life seemed relatively uneventful, and years passed
with only routine sightings. But she was considered a strikingly
successful mom. At one point, she was seen for several days trying to
support on the water's surface a dead calf belonging to Saida Beth.
When such behavior is observed, it's usually a mother supporting
her own newborn, Wells says; FB05's behavior with the calf was
unusual, and he still has no explanation for it.

In May 2008, FB05 moved.

She switched her home range to Roberts Bay and Little Sarasota Bay.
And her clique dwindled from seven or eight to just a couple of others.
Whether the move was connected to declining health isn't known, but
less than a year later, in January 2009, researchers saw FB05 with
raised skin lesions--a sign of infection--during a photographic
identification survey. A month later, she looked skinnier, her skin was
mottled and the lesions were growing and spreading. Two months after
that, in May, her coloration had improved but the lesions persisted and
she was still underweight.

Wells noted shark bites on her body, as if predators had noticed
FB05's vulnerability. She was last seen alive on May 14. A week
later her body was found.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Her Death

Stranding Investigations team members are on call 24/7 to pick up
sick, injured or dead dolphins from Southwest Florida. Dolphin mortality
fluctuates year to year but was higher than usual in 2009, with six
adult carcasses and two lost newborns found. FB05's body turned up
on the bay side of Longboat Key, on a sandbar just off St. Judes Drive.
Her emaciated body was put on a stretcher, hefted into me back of the
Stranding Investigations Program pickup and taken to Mote. There, her
remains were placed on a stainless steel table.

In most parts of the world, when a cetacean strands, those
conducting the necropsy are working on a stranger. But at Mote, many of
these animals have been known for decades. "It's rare to have
a complete history on an animal before it gets to your table," says
Gretchen Lovewell, the Program's manager. "It's more
common now because of Randy's work."

Simply observing a dolphin 862 times over nearly 40 years
doesn't tell you everything about its life, any more than greeting
longtime neighbors at the grocery store explains their lives.

To be effective in protecting bottle-nose dolphins, Wells says, we
need to understand the threats they face, and the necropsy is a valuable
source of information on cause of death. In death, FB05 began to look
more interesting.

Like a human autopsy, a dolphin necropsy starts with an
inch-by-inch inspection of the body under bright lights. On May 22,
2009, Ruth DeLynn recorded the findings from the necropsy of FB05.

The dolphin was extremely emaciated, weighing only 178 pounds. She
had a boat-propeller wound on her tail, and three shark-bite wounds and
infected bite marks. Other shark wounds were fresh and probably
postmortem, the result of opportunistic scavenging. Shark attacks are
not uncommon, Lovewell says: 22 percent of dolphin necropsies show
shark-attack wounds.

FB05 also had wounds from other dolphins. These severe "rake
marks" on her skin were clearly the product of dolphin bites.
"You can always tell," Lovewell says. "They're
straight-line rows of marks with the teeth a centimeter apart. Dolphin
bites. They go after each other. It's sexual aggression--a social
thing."

The rake-mark wounds may have occurred when FB05 was young and
desirable, or later when she became ill and vulnerable. The culprits
tend to be young males with raging testosterone. "They may attack
the weak, or attack calves with the intent of infanticide,"
Lovewell says. "We think males go after calves so the mothers will
come back into estrus."

Understanding What Happened

The team performing the necropsy on FB05 discovered evidence of a
difficult life. Most of her organs were unhealthy. She had kidney damage and her heart was extremely dense and fibrous--an old, overworked
heart," Lovewell called it. There was froth in her lungs, a sign
that FB05 had not died comfortably. And penetrating the right lung was a
2-inch-long stingray barb.

"You never know what you'll find," says DeLynn, with
the avid curiosity of the true scientist. "It's like opening a
present."

The stingray barb had been there so long that its entry wound on
the skin was impossible to find.

Such barb wounds are not unknown in dolphins, and in fact are
becoming more common. One issue could be that as sharks--the rays'
chief predators--are fished out, there's been an increase in the
stingray population. And so a dolphin in shallow water can suffer the
same fate as Steve Irwin, the television naturalist, who was killed when
he disturbed a stingray and it barbed him straight to the heart.

Years ago, a stingray barb penetrated the eye of another dolphin,
FB0535, and eventually migrated through her body to the aorta, where it
lodged and killed her. By the time the dolphin was necropsied in 2005,
"half her face was missing, eaten away by infection," says
DeLynn as she holds up a disfigured skull.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When FB05's necropsy was done, and all of her organs and body
parts had been examined, the team summarized their results. FB05 died of
multiple organ failure and old age (she was 46): emaciation, renal
disease, fibrotic heart, infection and the stingray barb in her lung.
But there was more to learn.

"Sometimes the soft tissues alone don't tell the entire
story," Wells says. "Being able to examine the skeletal
materials can tell you a great deal about old injuries or disease
processes that may have impacted the animals while they were alive but
was not evident from field photographs and observations, external
veterinary examination, or even blood work."

When FB05's flesh was washed away, DeLynn carefully cleaned
and dried the dolphin's bones. Then she laid them on a table,
numbered each one with india ink and examined them--bone by bone.

To the experienced eye, bones can reveal as much as flesh and
blood. FB05 had mild arthritis. Her left radius and ulna--the forearm
bones in humans--were fused together. She also had a poorly healed
fracture of the left scapula--cause unknown. But dolphins play rough.
"Dolphins aren't these friendly little animals," DeLynn
says. "They bite, they butt."

On another shelf, she points to a caved-in skull--evidently an
injury inflicted on one dolphin by another. "They're wild
animals.

"What surprises me is how they survive. How they keep going
with all their fractures, cuts, barbs, arthritis."

Not that they have a choice, she says. "If they exhibit
weakness, they'd be shark food in days."

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